Screen loaded with folders (High Sierra 10.13.6)

[Muizen]

Suddenly my iMac screen is loaded with many hundreds of folders (showing year, month, day).
I know that I can remove these by putting these, one-by-one in the trash.
But it would take days to remove this many folders.
Is there a way to remove these folders in a simple way.
Harry

 

[CooperBox]

I'd be intrugued to know what false move you made for that to happen. I've never heard of many folders appearing on the desktop for no reason.
So, assuming you have made a system backup in the past, I'd then try this:
- Click on Finder, then select Preferences.
- Under the heading 'Show these items on the destop', ensure that Hard disks, External disks etc are unchecked.
- Click anywhere on the destop, and then Command A together. (That should highlight all the folder icons on the desktop).
- Drag all items to your Home icon in the Finder left sidebar. (If you have no Home icon showing, this can be selected in Finder/Preferences/Sidebar).
- Then at your leisure, from within the Home folder, arrange all the 'orphan' folders appropriately.

 

[Muizen]

Thank you for advice!
When I follow " (If you have no Home icon showing, this can be selected in Finder/Preferences/Sidebar).
The problem is that in the Side bar there is no "Home" visible! see screenshot.
I also attach a screenshot of the screen with all the files on it.
Harry

 

[DeltaMac]

Your home folder is the one named "harrybriels", and won't be named "home", unless that is actually the name of your user account. It's also identified by the icon that looks like a house.

I would suggest NOT dragging all those year-named files to your harrybriels folder. Make a new folder just for this one-time purpose (leave it on your desktop while you are deciding what to do with all those folders), so you don't suddenly have to look at hundreds of files in your own user folder.
The quickest way to clear off your desktop is to open the Desktop folder (should be in a finder sidebar, with that name "Desktop". Choose that folder, then, if needed, change to "List View". Then sort the file list by file name. Now it will be an easy task to drag all of the year-named folders to another folder. Again, I would make one just for this purpose. That will clear off ALL of those year-named folders from your desktop.

BUT, I would be curious what exactly is in those folders (open one or two randomly), and WHY there are hundreds of those folders named from 15 or more years ago. My guess is those were created by some software that you were using years ago, maybe something used for file backups.
Do the files in those folders look familiar to you at all?
If there is nothing that looks remotely interesting -- after 15 years, you can probably drag that packed folder to the trash (don't forget to empty the trash to clear up the space on your drive!)